PMV-Based Predictive Algorithms for Controlling Thermal Comfort in Building Plants

The present paper is focused on thermal comfort control for building occupants. Thermal comfort is addressed here by the use of PMV index for such measurement. Based on PMV, two predictive strategies characterized by having terminal constraints are proposed and compared. The first is based on generating a temperature set-point signal that optimizes the building (single zone) internal PMV value. The second includes the PMV model in the controller prediction computations, generating a non-linear PMV model having Wiener structure. In both cases, the linear part of the model is built by using Laguerre basis. Simulation results, conducted with actual climate data, illustrate the performance of the thermal comfort control algorithms.